Thursday, 31 October 2013

Catalyst are the UK’s market leading independent business energy brokers and utility consultants, specialising in energy procurement services, sustainability and environmental services. Catalyst currently works on behalf of thousands of UK companies helping them to make significant savings in their energy bills, through well informed procurement decisions, by eliminating and recovering over payments, and by helping those customers manage their energy consumption through our Catalyst Energy Advantage™ consumption data reports, and ongoing invoice analysis.

The ‘big six’ energy companies will be forced to be more transparent about their profits and make it simpler for customers to switch providers, under plans for an annual competition check on the industry.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey will unveil plans for the yearly review later in the House of Commons.

He is expected to say the companies will be subject to rigorous checks in three key areas – competition, profit and customer engagement.

It follows a storm of controversy around energy prices after four of the big six companies raised prices by an average of 9.1%, causing customer bills to exceed £1,400 a year and leading to allegations of cartel behaviour.

The annual check is designed to drive up competition in the market, which is still heavily dominated by the big six.

Despite a number of new entrants to the market, British Gas, SSE, Powergen, EDF, E.ON and Scottish Power still provide gas and electricity to 99% of British homes.

The annual review will aim to crack down on practices seen as preventing new firms from entering the market.

One supposed method revealed earlier this week involved British Gas. The energy giant was said to have a dedicated team that contacted customers who had switched away and offered them lower rates to go back.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, managing director of Ovo Energy, made the claims at a select committee hearing in which companies faced MPs.

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Npower seem to be first in line for most of the criticism, with Ofgem reporting the commercial energy firm paid on average:

- £59.61 per megawatt-hour in 2010

- £57.32 per megawatt-hour in 2011

- £58.39 per megawatt-hour in 2012

All the while increasing retail prices by 5.1%, 7.2% and 9.1% in those same years, respectively. E.ON and EDF also found to have raised prices in spite of mostly small changes in wholesale electricity costs.

Four of the big six – British Gas, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE – have all announced price increases over the last few weeks, causing MPs to call the bosses of all the major energy players in the UK before a committee to justify such raises in bills for private and business energy consumers, subsequently Ofgem’s findings could scarcely be more timely.

The government’s agreement to underwrite the Hinkley Point nuclear power station could turn out to be economically insane and hugely costly to consumers, City analysts have warned.

Analysts at Liberum Capital said the government’s deal with France’s EDF will make Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world with the longest construction period in the world.

The government gave the go-ahead last week for EDF to build the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset. Its two reactors will cost £8bn each and will provide power for about 60 years once it starts operating in 2023.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, has made a huge bet that fossil fuel prices will rocket by the time Hinkley Point starts operating in 2013, Liberum’s Peter Atherton and Mulu Sun said in a report published on Wednesday.

They said: “The UK government is taking a massive bet that fossil fuel prices will be extremely high in the future. If that bet proves to be wrong then this contract will look economically insane when HPC commissions. We are frankly staggered that the UK government thinks it is appropriate to take such a bet and underwrite the economics of any power station that costs £5m per MW and takes nine years to build.”

Davey controversially agreed a minimum price of £92.50 for every megawatt hour (MWh) of energy Hinkley Point generates – almost twice the current wholesale cost of electricity.

Some of Britain’s biggest energy companies have been accused of raising households bills for no reason and systematically overcharging customers by £3.7bn a year as they were grilled by MPs over their soaring prices and profits.

They were taken to task by Stephen Fitzpatrick, the chief executive of small supplier Ovo Energy, who launched a stinging attack on his larger rivals for being “the best filibusters in the business” when it comes to revealing how they make their money.

After British Gas, npower, SSE and Scottish Power announced inflation-busting increases in household bills, Fitzpatrick said he “cannot explain any of these price rises” as his company is buying gas for 7% less than it was two years ago.

The four companies that have raised bills in recent weeks are under increasing pressure to justify their higher prices after figures from the regulator Ofgem showed that network costs have risen by just £15 since last year, wholesale costs by £10 and green costs by £10.

During the hearing MPs criticised the companies’ executives for accepting large bonuses while putting up prices year after year and failing in their duties to protect poor households who have to choose between heating and eating.

John Robertson, a Labour MP, warned that thousands of people were dying of hypothermia because they could not afford to pay their bills. He dismissed the companies’ claims that they do not disconnect customers by pointing out that those who fall into debt are moved on to prepayment meters which in effect force them to “self-disconnect”. “The big reason is they die of hypothermia and they can’t afford to keep the heating on. By the time you have gone to look for them [after 30 days of no energy] it’s too late,” he said.

Ofgem’s latest findings have brought more criticism onto some of the UK’s largest energy companies in a week where the ‘Big Six’ are already being held to account by a government committee over pricing. Ofgem claim that energy companies have seen wholesale electricity costs fall over the last three years whilst putting up prices for homes and businesses across the UK.

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Two new gas-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 2.1 gigawatts (GW) could come online by 2018 in Britain, developer InterGen said on Monday.

Britain faces a power capacity crunch within two years’ time due to the closure of polluting and ageing stations and a lack of new capacity.

Plans for new thermal power stations have dried up in recent years due to an overhaul of the energy market but government announcements on the creation of a capacity market have reignited interest.

The two plants, Spalding Energy in Lincolnshire which is majority owned by utility Centrica and Gateway Energy in Essex, together will cost up to 1 billion pounds ($1.62 billion)to build and are equal to around 3 percent of Britain’s current installed capacity.

LADY Susan Rice, the senior independent director at electricity and gas supplier SSE, has called for energy companies to be more “transparent” about the charges that their customers face.

Rice, who is also managing director of Lloyds Banking Group’s Scottish operations, said that greater transparency would help utility companies to regain the public’s trust.

Tomorrow the House of Commons’ energy and climate change committee will question senior executives from the “Big Six” energy companies over the flurry of recent price rises.

Rice said: “Transparency in all areas of operations – but perhaps most importantly in how companies charge their customers for goods and services – has to be a priority.

“Energy providers have to be able to explain what their customers are paying for, or they can’t hope to earn and retain their trust.”

Rice, who became a non-executive director at Perth-based SSE in 2003 and took over as its senior independent director in 2007, made the comments earlier this month at a private non-executive directors’ event hosted by “Big Four” accountancy firm KPMG.

Her comments, which have only just been made public, come amid a string of price rises from energy suppliers.

SSE kicked off the current round of cost increases on 10 October, followed a week later by Scottish Gas-owner Centrica, with Npower and ScottishPower also ramping up prices last week.

Just Energy Group Inc. NYSE:JE, TSX:JE, a leading competitive retailer of natural gas, electricity and green energy in North America, announced today its expansion into the UK residential energy market, under its new brand, Green Star Energy.Last year marked a significant milestone in Just Energy’s evolution as an international organisation with the launch of Hudson Energy serving the UK commercial energy segment. This latest expansion sees the fulfillment of a goal to grow beyond the commercial space with the launch of a new brand, Green Star Energy, dedicated to serving the UK residential market. Now, households across the United Kingdom gain a new, simple and seamless option for their home energy supply needs with fixed or variable-priced electricity and gas programmes.

Consumers are right to be “livid” about companies pursuing aggressive tax avoidance, a senior Treasury minister said today, amid reports that energy firms are saving millions by exploiting a legal tax loophole.

The Independent on Sunday reported that three energy companies have saved an estimated £140 million by reducing their taxable profits by racking up interest on debt from their owners.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander declined to comment on the individual cases, but told BBC1′s Andrew Marr Show: “My message to any company that is engaged in aggressive tax avoidance is to stop it.”

The carbon tax should be scrapped before it makes energy imported from Germany cheaper than domestic supplies, according to City analysts.

The City believes the green measure – championed by former Liberal Democrat energy minister Chris Huhne – is the easiest target for the Government to axe as it attempts to reduce household energy bills.

The tax on coal and gas was introduced earlier this year and is designed to provide power operators with an incentive to invest in low carbon dioxide generation.

It adds an average of £5 to annual household bills, but this is expected to rise sharply in the future.

The levy is a uniquely British invention slapped on bills in addition to the cost of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, which licenses energy companies producing carbon emissions.

The bosses of the big six energy companies will appear before the energy and climate change select committee on 29 October. The powerful group of MPs, chaired by Tim Yeo, will grill them on green levies, profit levels – and why consumers face such big increases in their bills. These are the questions they should ask:

British Gas is boosting its profits with millions of pounds made by overcharging customers, it was claimed.The energy provider has allegedly taken £20m from customers with outstanding credit on their accounts and poured it into its annual accounts over the last year.A whistleblower revealed that profits from credit, which is built up when customers use less energy than they are originally billed for.

Friday, 25 October 2013

EXPERTS have warned that consumers could be faced with an annual bill of £1bn to subsidise Hinkley nuclear plant if wholesale electricity prices fall below the price the government has guaranteed EDF.

The UK government and the French energy firm yesterday unveiled the terms of a long-awaited deal to build Hinkley Point C in Somerset, the UK’s first new nuclear project in decades.

Energy secretary Ed Davey told a news conference yesterday that the agreement “represents a very good deal for Britain” and could reduce bills by up to £77 per year – but admitted that he cannot guarantee a better deal for consumers due to “inherent uncertainties” in the energy market.

Former government energy adviser Tom Burke told City A.M. the deal could pile on more than £1bn in indirect subsidies rather than lowering bills. International wholesale prices being significantly lower than the strike price would mean Britons effectively subsidising EDF.

“In order to set the strike price, the government has had to guess what the electricity price would be in 2058, which is impossible,” Burke said.

“This deal relies on wholesale prices continuing to go up. If they go down, consumers will have to make up the shortfall, which could add up to more than £1bn per year,” he added.

A strike price – the price EDF will receive for electricity produced at the site – has been set at £92.50 per megawatt hour for the next 35 years.

This is double the current wholesale price of electricity and almost triple the estimates put forward in the government’s 2006 energy review, where it cited £38/MWh as a reasonable average and even put forward a low case of just £30/MWh.

A spokesperson from the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed yesterday that any decline in wholesale energy prices would be footed by the consumer.

David Cameron has pledged to roll back “green charges” that add an average of £112 to energy bills, as he came under fire over Sir John Major’s call for a windfall tax on the excess profits of Britain’s big six energy companies.As Ed Miliband mocked the prime minister in the wake of Major’s call for state intervention on energy prices, Cameron announced an annual competition review to examine the cost of green regulations and the level of profits.The PM said: “I can tell the house today that we will be having a proper competition test carried out over the next year to get to the bottom of whether this market can be more competitive. I want more companies, I want better regulation, I want a better deal for consumers. But yes, we also need to roll back the green charges that he put in place as energy secretary.”The review, which will be carried out by the Office of Fair Trading and the new Competition and Markets Authority, is to be announced next week in the annual energy statement. The chancellor, George Osborne, is to announce any changes to levies in his autumn statement.Downing Street later said the prime minister was determined to roll back the costs of green levies. But government figures showed that the largest proportion of the £112 the charges add to the average bill were related to measures aimed specifically at less affluent people.

Nearly nine in ten British businesses (88%) are worried about the security of their energy supply according a joint report from the Major Energy Users’ Council (MEUC) and energy solutions firm Power Efficiency.

Ofgem recently warned the UK could face ‘brownouts’ and ‘blackouts’ in 2015-16, as spare capacity could drop to 4% from its current level of 14%.

The survey of 129 companies – including 10% of the FTSE 100 – with a combined annual energy spend of roughly £1 billion, also found 90% thought rising energy prices posed a threat to the competitiveness of UK businesses.

Andrew Bainbridge, Chairman of the MEUC said: “It is clear that big businesses are becoming increasingly alarmed by the energy perils they face and understand they must stiffen their resolve to actively manage and reduce their costs.”

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

The Energy and Climate Change Committee has called the heads of the UK’s biggest six commercial energy firms before MPs today to give evidence to support the recent spate of prices rises across the industry.

Sir Robert Smith, Chairman of the committee of MPs, has called upon bosses of the ‘big six’ to Parliament after three of the energy firms announced price rises of up to 10.4% in recent weeks. SSE, Npower and British Gas are all set to raise prices on household energy bills as soon as the 15th of November, with analysts – and, indeed suggestions from the rest of the Big Six as well – that the other three major energy merchants will join them not too far into 2014.

David Cameron has hailed the UK government agreement with French-owned EDF to build the first new British nuclear power station in 20 years, saying it was a very big day for Britain and would kickstart a new generation of nuclear power in the UK.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, claimed it was a great deal for consumers and would result in energy bills falling by more than £75 by 2030.

He added: “If we don’t make these essential investments … we’re going to see the lights going out.”

The 35-year deal, struck at £92.50 per megawatt hour, is twice the current wholesale market rate for electricity, and will be attacked by some as a massive subsidy to help another non-carbon fuel, with the funds going to the French taxpayer and the Chinese government, that has a minority stake to build the new plant at Hinkley C in Somerset.

With the deal between UK government and EDF announced on Monday morning, Cameron said: “This is a very big day for our country: the first time we’ve built a new nuclear power station for a very long time.”

He said the deal would be the first of many “kick-starting again this industry, providing thousands of jobs and providing long-term, safe and secure supplies of electricity far into the future”.

The subsidy inherent in the strike price reflects the risk in constructing the plant, uncertainty over the future market and the need to reduce UK’s dependence on carbon fuels, such as coal and gas.

But the deal comes at a politically sensitive time as the government fends off criticism that government imposed green subsidies are pushing up the price of electricity.

Cameron has rejected a Labour proposal for a 20-month government-imposed freeze on energy prices.

Two UK nuclear power plants aimed at meeting obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will likely be followed by others once the government sees the energy comes at a reasonable price, former adviser to the UK government Sir David King told RT.

RT: It seems the UK is rather bucking the trend compared to the rest of the world, particularly Germany, when it comes to nuclear power. Why is that?

David King: A decision was made back in 2007 by the British government that we should invest in new nuclear power stations. The Fukushima disaster has been analyzed in painful detail by those of us who advise governments, and the conclusion is that we can still build nuclear power stations safely and deliver electricity in a reliable way.

What you’ve got to also remember is that in Britain we have a commitment to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And we have a detailed plan to achieve that. The parliament has set out a climate change committee. They’ve established carbon budgets on a full yearly basis and we have carbon budgets out to 2028. In order to meet these budgets, we have a detailed plan of producing electricity on the grid. And included in that plan are renewables. Included in that plan is nuclear energy. So it is part of a mix.

RT: The main argument being named against building nuclear plants is the risk of a disaster, like the one in Japan in 2011. How big is the threat? Surely you can’t put a price on people’s safety?

DK: We’re not putting a price on people’s safety in the way you’re suggesting at all. We have the toughest regulatory procedures in the world in place. And the new nuclear power stations that would be built – two more would be built as the result of a decision announced this morning by the government – these power stations would be even safer than the previous generation of power stations because of the regulations that are being tightened up so much.

Announcing that energy, road and rail projects worth £33bn have passed the “first hurdle” to joining the inititative, the Government hailed the high level of interest from gas and electricity companies as “helping ensure that Britain develops a sustainable future energy supply”.

Of the 40 applications announced so far, 15 have agreed to be named. The latest of these include Helius Energy’s £300m, 100 megawatt (MW) biomass plant in Avonmouth, Bristol; the £400m Islandmagee gas storage project in Northern Ireland; and two Intergen gas-fired power generation projects at Spalding in Lincolnshire and Gateway Energy Centre in Essex.

Non-energy applications to the guarantee scheme include the Countesswells mixed-use development in Aberdeen, which will see 3,000 homes built alongside “business spaces and retail outlets”; the relocation of Northampton University and the redevelopment of a campus at University of Roehampton.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, said: “Getting our infrastructure right means we can be globally competitive, boost growth and create jobs across the UK.

“What we see today is the extent to which the Government is reaching out to help the private sector build Britain’s key infrastructure.”

The signing of a nuclear deal between EDF and the government is a landmark event for power generation. Today’s go-ahead for the Hinkley Point C plant shows ministers are prepared to commit Britain to provide decades of guaranteed financial returns (paid for by you and me as energy users) to companies in return for winning huge slugs of investment for new power stations.

The move, which also involves Chinese cash, should encourage other major investors such as Hitachi of Japan to proceed with their own nuclear plans, giving some longer-term certainty to power supplies. But it will do nothing to tackle the possibility of short-term power blackouts.

Ministers insist that the commitment to provide Hinkley Point with a guaranteed price of around double the market rate is not a subsidy. The final figure of £92.50 is a considerable step up from the £80 per MWhr said to be on the table when negotiations began in earnest, and that figure is said by some calculations to be worth around £80bn in guaranteed revenues, the cost of nine Olympics.

Critics will accuse the government of providing subsidies to an old technology that should not need handouts, while pointing out the safety dangers and the unsolved waste disposal problems raised by new nuclear. Questions will also be asked about the wisdom of providing a country alleged to be involved in cyber-spying, access to sensitive energy infrastructure via the involvement of a state-owned firm.

The biggest plus for nuclear is that something definite has happened at all: a speculative proposal from Tony Blair in 2006 has finally been transformed into a concrete plan to spend £14bn building a new plant today.

Nuclear power had been consigned to history by most policymakers in western Europe since a partial meltdown of the US plant at Three Mile Island in 1979 and then a catastrophic accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine seven years later sent the equivalent radioactive fallout of 20 Hiroshima bombs as far afield as the Scottish Highlands.

The energy regulator has confirmed new rules governing fixed rate energy deals while announcing an £8.5m penalty against Scottish Power over misleading sales techniques.

Ofgem said Scottish Power would pay £7.5m to benefit vulnerable customers and establish a £1m customer compensation fund for breaching the terms of its market licence between October 2009 and January 2012.

It said Scottish Power provided customers with inaccurate estimations of annual charges and comparisons with their current supplier both on the doorstep and over the phone.

The settlement, the company said, meant that more than 140,000 people on the Warm Home Discount scheme would automatically receive payments of around £50 each.

Scottish Power accepted the failings but said it had now rectified the problems. It stopped door-to-door selling in 2011.

The penalty comes at a sensitive time for the big six energy firms – under fire from customers over inflation-busting increases to bills ahead of winter while politicians scrap over intervention in the market.

To date, three of the firms have announced average rises of between 8 and 11%.

As part of moves to ensure the market acts fairly, Ofgem said new rules were now in force meaning energy suppliers were banned from increasing prices on fixed term tariffs over the course of a contract and banned from automatically rolling householders on to another fixed term offer when their current one ended.

From December 31, firms will have to cut the number of tariffs they offer customer to just four for gas or electricity while from March companies will have to show the cheapest tariff they offer on every customers’ bill.